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As the pilot of a Phoenix AY 21 space thingy, you have been given the day off... tomorrow. Today, however, you've got some cleaning up to do. It seems that someone, somewhere wants the old space highways re-opened and muggins has got the job.

Back in the old days highways weren't the serene, safe places of today. No, then the routes were booby-trapped and armed with laser turrets, not to mention black holes, magnetic zones and negative gamma particles.

To save space, highways used to be built using the pipe principle. So, instead of all the lanes being laid out flat like an ordinary road, they were wrapped round onto the inside of a tube.

As you advance along each highway, the computer display divides each approaching section of road into tile-like vector-graphic sections, which represent the possible trajectories open to you. Miss these tiles and you'll end up in that great batchroom in the sky!

Although there are some tiles, such as energy giving red ones, that are actually worth steering over, most are to be avoided at all costs. Take purple tiles, for example, these friendly anti-matter zones will end your life in a flurry of sparks... no questions asked.

Then there are Green tiles which cause you to lose control for a few precious seconds, while blue tiles drain your energy.

Later stretches of highway contain tiles that spin round the inside of the tube... slick timing is required to get past these obstacles; of course, even if you do, the chances are you'll get blasted to smithereens by a laser turret, or fall into one of the many black holes cunningly placed just where you don't want them.

So the obnject of the game is to steer the Phoenix around the insides of the highway tube, avoiding anything remotely dangerous, by side-stepping either to the right or left, so as to keep on the tiles.

Although sometimes you will be able to thwart danger by turning either clockwise or anti-clockwise, there will be many other times when you can only turn in one direction to stay alive, so perfecting a route through each level is essential.

If you die, you can use Phoenix's replay mode, courtesy of an in-flight video recorder.

Although some people have proclaimed vector graphics as a thing of the past, this style of presentation can still work when used properly, and Phoenix is a perfect example of a simple, though well thought out and neatly presented vector graphics arcade game which doesn't need filled graphics to make it fun to play.